One of my customers a large welding business whose name I can not reveal in the Mon Valley is housed in a large multi building former factory where they rebuilt the electric drive engines for trains.
Wait a minute thought trains are diesel powered? No they are really electric powered the diesel engines drive a DC or AC powered generator on train which does all the controlling and drive actions of the train.
Well they moved into this old factory and that's when things started getting strange .
His workers often complained of the feeling they where being watched. or seeing a strange shadow across the shop floor. Well finally one night while the guys where working late they saw a guy in work clothes walk thru the back of the shop not knowing who he was or how he got in the shop they chased after him but as soon as they went to see who he was he was gone?
Well needless to say no one wanted to work evenings any more. While there have also been people who have worked in evenings and nothing has happened.
Now the Mon valley it self with all its busted up crime ridden decaying towns can be scary in its self so these strange activity's just helped get guys on edge to begin with.
The owner of the plant thought the guys where feeding him a line of bull shit because they did not want to work at night in a dangerous community.
I have worked in the plant and it makes all kind of noises and you get a creepy feeling from it but I have never seen any thing . But it seems every time a new worker comes in they report the feeling they are being watched.
Well as time would pass and working there I would join the local Penn Hills fire dept. and wouldn't you know it one of the members of the fire dept. was a former machinist at this plant over in the mon valley .
So one day when no one was around I asked Terry if when he worked at the old plant was there any kind of strange goings on ? Why yes he said that's Airplane Joe screwing with you guys .
Airplane Joe? I asked .
Well he goes on to tell me the Joe was a retired captain from the air force and after he retired from air force he came to the plant and worked long enough he was about to collect 2 pensions Air force and engine plant he was set for life.
He was walking around the plant on his last day of work bragging how he had the world by the ass when he suffered a fatal heart attack at his work station. Yep right where the guys saw the mysterious worker.
Terry told me that any time Joe shows up to cause mischief to tell him to go F*^K him self and he will stay away for a few weeks.Seems the guys who worked with Joe did not like him.
Well with this information in hand the next time I went to the plant and told the owner and guys about it they had a good laugh and said OK so its not their imagination.
The owner still thinks its a bunch of bull but I have had professional ghost hunters come in at night and their equipment has picked up anomaly's .
The owner says he just does not want to know what the team found as he often works down there late at night himself.
So maybe its all a big bunch of nothing and everyone is letting their imaginations run wild but then again why are some bothered while others are not ?
Strangely a place with a record of horrific industrial deaths you would think would be haunted was not.
In the late 1800's early 1900's there existed the Pressed Steel Car Company in Mckees rocks Pa. Bottoms Section. A sprawling place with some of the original buildings which can still be seen from the McKees Rocks Bridge .
It was a a horrific place to work even by steel mill standards of the time many a worker was horribly maimed or smashed and killed in this plant which made rail road cars and employed over 6000 workers at one time.
and yes there was an over priced company store and over priced housing just like you found in coal mine towns that took advantage of workers leaving them in virtual poverty and which played one nationality off against the other.
A violent strike in 1909 would see 12 dead as workers finally had enough one day when wage envelops where short with no explanation.
The strike brought about changes but the plant did not last much past WWII and its buildings still exist to this day having been turned into an industrial park for multiple business
Now such a place of death and despair you would think would be haunted by the ghosts of past incidents and there would be all kind of paranormal activity but surprisingly it is not going on as far as I can tell.
How do I know this ?
Well in 1978 while attending Connely Skill Center where I was training to become a Refrigeration Mechanic I needed to make money and went to work for Burns International Detective Agency as an unarmed guard and my first assignment would be at your guessed it the Mckeesrocks in the old Pressed Steel Plant
I guarded several buildings with in the complex on a rotating 12 hour shift the buildings where leased by American Forge who made Crane hooks and ratchet binders for holding down loads on trucks.
The place was a total shit hole and dangerous to work in One of the kids in my neighborhood dad worked there and always talked about how dangerous the place was but these where days when OSHA was first enforced and eventually the place would be forced to close after fires and numerous other problems etc..
While the industrial park did a good job keeping the park buildings maintained and secured tenants like American Forge did them no favors in taking care of there places they leased.
I knew the place was some kind of mill and heard from those who worked there they made railroad cars.
But it was not till many years later and the advent of the Internet that I was able to dig out all the details of where I had worked ,and how horrifying the conditions where there at one time.
Now with all the deaths and despair and working overnight in this place all by myself you think I would have experienced some kind of paranormal event but nothing happened I would run across guards from Paragon Security who worked the place as well and none of them ever spoke of any spooky goings on and one of my customers who started his business out in the place also said he never experienced any thing as well.
So strange as it might seem there are no ghosts at the place it seems and if there are no ones talking about it. . Unlike many other places I work where there is all kind of unexplained activity's. In some ways its good because people are hesitant to work in such places and it draws plenty of curious people around some with good intentions some not .
UPDATE:
When I went past the plant this past weekend of 11/14 they have started the process of tearing down the old forge buildings .
It was a a horrific place to work even by steel mill standards of the time many a worker was horribly maimed or smashed and killed in this plant which made rail road cars and employed over 6000 workers at one time.
and yes there was an over priced company store and over priced housing just like you found in coal mine towns that took advantage of workers leaving them in virtual poverty and which played one nationality off against the other.
A violent strike in 1909 would see 12 dead as workers finally had enough one day when wage envelops where short with no explanation.
The strike brought about changes but the plant did not last much past WWII and its buildings still exist to this day having been turned into an industrial park for multiple business
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| One of the cars produced at Pressed Steel |
I guarded several buildings with in the complex on a rotating 12 hour shift the buildings where leased by American Forge who made Crane hooks and ratchet binders for holding down loads on trucks.
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